Early in the morning in Lanzhou, Northwest China's Gansu province, Xie Yanting awakens. A doctoral auditor at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Lanzhou University, Xie always goes to campus, whether he has classes or not, Chengdu.cn reported.

It takes Xie 13 minutes to walk from his home to the classroom. Due to cerebral palsy, his body involuntarily leans to the left while walking, his right heel cannot touch the ground and his arms cannot swing normally, making it seem like he could fall at any moment. However, he walks steadily at an ordinary speed.

Xie, a Lanzhou native, has had cerebral palsy since childhood, causing severe deformities in his face, hands and feet. He was unable to speak, write, or walk normally. According to the Lanzhou University Journal, from elementary school through high school, Xie completed his coursework with children his own age while his mother, father, and grandfather helped complete his education at home.

Xie received 262 points out of 750 on the Chinese college entrance exam, or gaokao because he couldn't hold a pen or write due to his physical limitations. Due to this hurdle, he could only finish the multiple-choice questions — but in that section he received 262 points out of 280, with a perfect score in math. This was enough to become an auditor at Lanzhou University.

Despite his low score in gaokao, he has already published five articles in mathematics journals, including four in journals indexed by SCI, one of the world's most selective citation databases for scientific literature. In addition, he has completed all courses at Lanzhou University, from undergraduate to doctoral studies. He has even met the requirements to apply to a doctorate.

The 30-year-old made an analogy about auditing: "Auditing and disability are the same," he said. "No one wants to be just an audit student or disabled, everyone wants to live a normal life, but this is something that cannot be helped and I don't feel ashamed."

Xie's research mainly focuses on discrete mathematics, group theory and applied mathematics. In particular, his work revolves around hypercubes in Cayley graphs. In January, Xie published a paper in Discrete Mathematic related to the subject.

Xu Shoujun is a professor at Lanzhou University and Xie's teacher in analytical geometry. He quickly noticed this special student and paid extra attention to Xie. When a question the professor casually mentioned in class caught Xie's attention, Xu encouraged him to expand the question into a topic for a paper.

This experience opened the door for Xie's research endeavors.

"Professor Xu previously traveled with Xie to academic conferences abroad and paid for our airfare and lodging out of his own pocket. He also paid for Xie's printer and laptop. We owe Mr. Xu a great debt of gratitude because my son would not be where he is today without him," Liu Xiaofeng, Xie's mother, said in an interview with China Youth Daily.

This year, Xie's doctoral journey is coming to an end, and as an audit student he will not receive his degree.

As for his future plans, Xie's mother said he wants to stay on as a postdoctoral auditor and join a university as a researcher. Xie himself also said he hopes to continue on the path to academia.

"I hope whenever people think of me, they can think of my achievements in graph theory and math but not even know I am disabled," he said. "That's my ideal."